Waking the Tiger
by The Eternity Dragon
Summary: Sasuke wonders at the choices he's made and the people he loved and left behind, sometimes it's hard to decide whether you are human enough to ever feel regret...and if he does, could he ever go back?


**By The Eternity Dragon**

**Disclaimer:** How many times a day do I wish I had the talent and skill to have come up with Naruto? Let's just say a lot alright...and LEAVE it there.

**Waking the tiger**

**A/N: **_Please read this before you read the actual one-shot_

I can only say that when I wrote this I had very little direction in my minds eye for what I was writing, as well as being in what I would like to call 'the definition of a bitch of a bad mood'. The focus is placed on the idea's and motivations that would justify the decisions Sasuke makes I was attempting to get into his head and see what makes him tick. The idea of when you argue yourself into a circle, when you HAD to do something, you just HAD to. There was no time to stop and think, that was it, on the tracks, the train was coming: move or die. To quote Orochimaru: "When a heart is sufficiently ruthless in its desires...then for good or evil, the end will justify the means...the heart of an avenger."

Note to self: _Why am I doing ethics in my spare time??? WHY?!?! DAMN YOU CONSEQUENTIALISM YOU AREN'T SUPPOSED TO APPEAR IN MY CREATIVE WRITING!!!_

* * *

What do you say when you've single handily burnt and destroyed any bridges that could ever take you home again?

What do you think when you want to turn back, reset the sand dial that's chained to the floor and draw back time with you bloody, _maimed_ fingers?

What if all you ever wanted was something so foul, that in the end hope turned against you, snubbed you and pushed you, arms out stretched, into the gutter.

There are barriers inside Sasuke Uchiha's mind. Barriers he's driven up and made himself, grinding with a pestle and mortar the thoughts of regret, denial, self hatred and disgust. Until they became a sticky concrete paste, so thick and glutinous, so high and impenetrable that you could bring hell's angelic demons, heaven's warriors, bring the flooding water of the Nile, and the fire from the bowels of earth. Bring it all, slam it hard and mix it all up together and throw it down against it.

The walls will hold.

Through hard labour he maintains them, slaves over them, with every passing thought and waking moment the wall becomes a little thicker, totally encompassing.

Here is the constant, incessant assurance that this _this_ is what he wants

Wholly.

Utterly.

Completely.

He wants power without loyalties, pain without love and strength without friendship.

He is now, he rationalises as he always really was.

He walks, with the setting sun behind him, taller then all those years ago. Older, in more ways than the physical.

His eyes deep and coal like, glittering in the shimmering shadows that slip in between the trees, the eyes speak of sorrow, anger and the cold desolation that he's brought upon himself.

Sasuke shivers, the ground is soggy with the summer rain and it sucks at his feet, yet he doesn't feel the cold, the nerves connect to the brain and his body responds, but he doesn't really _feel_ it. In the same way that when he looks at death there is no cold clenching in the gut, just the clean slide of his eyes over a dead body, smooth and impersonal.

He walks until he's sure no one is watching, it's important that no one is watching, it's part of the game he plays every once in a while, the game that stops the walls from caving in and driving him mad….mad like the rest of _them_.

He closes his eyes and stretches out his hands.

In another life, in another world, Sasuke could have been a dancer, he's fluid enough with motions. He always was. He moves easily, flowing with the rhythm and the pulse, allowing his mind to follow where his body takes him to.

He has the right poise, the right air, the right confidence.

He was never clumsy like Naruto, never like Naruto. He holds himself with grace, fallen from paradise, sin written in every line of his body. Deadly sensuous, arms arched, body slightly curved at the spine, feet firm pressing forwards, limbs almost pleading to be taken, to be held.

_To be saved._

He reaches towards an ideal, eyes, neither inky black of smoky grey, bleeding ebony stumps, closed firmly tight, pressing back the world.

This one last place of refuge, the last place that hasn't been torn open, tossed aside, beating and alive, only to be trampled on and slithered all over.

In the semi darkness the harsh shrill cry of a crow rings out into the coming night as the sun dips and vanishes beyond the horizon, lost to the vast emptiness of space.

Sasuke convulses, his thoughts tumbling at him, verses, half forgotten words, things that he felt, distant memories from a long time ago:

_Coursing through my system, in my blood, driving through my veins._

_Plague that you are like a virus you spread, slowly the wheel turns to insanity as I look on._

_I'll kiss the gun and swallow the bullet. _

His fingers curl into his palm, he's afraid, very slightly, the motion is more symbolic then anything else, as slowly he withdraws from these thoughts, closing himself in an infinitely dark place. Where the walls sag and cave and Sasuke finds himself treading cold water in a sea of thoughts that have no direction, but only a sink. A giant plug hole at the bottom which sucks him down, in a whirlpool that he doesn't dare swim against less he should disturb the current.

He's not stupid, he knows what the sink-the eventual end means: death or possession.

But he's not sure he really cares anymore as the walls shiver and shake all about him, and press unmercifully down.

If he would admit it to himself, Sasuke would see every fibre of his being riddled with self doubt, lacking total conviction.

He would see progression for progressions sake, stripped of dignity and seduced, raped and sexually assaulted by choices and decisions he thought he'd never sink to making. Things he never-that no decent person- not Naruto- would ever _ever_ do.

It's the flip side of the coin, the 'other' reality.

Part of him likes, loves, lusts for it.

The bloodshed, the remorselessness, the fear, the anger, the violence and brutality. It's…arousing, licking the bloody blade clean.

The other part, the analytical and viciously sensible half of his mind, to one that sees things for exactly what they are: turns a blind eye and hides.

_It was the only way, the only way, he had no **choice**._

The walls shake and slip again, reality, that black abyss beneath the closed lids shudders.

_Lies._

The thought bubbles to the surface before it can be subdued, and Sasuke finds himself wide eyed and breathing hard, shivering in the dusk. Cold clawing and itching at his skin as he bends over, forehead clammy and sweaty as he feels nauseatingly sick.

_It is true, it is true, it is._

Somehow the smell and taste of blood is riling at the back of his throat, deathly strong and suffocating as he fights down bile.

Its-this-it's what he wanted, all of it.

His neck- the scar, throbs and burns into the bleeding torn ivory of his skin.

Silence falls like a pebble cast into a still lake, rippling outwards filling him with vibrations of….remorse?

Regret?

He's not sure he's human enough to feel those emotions any longer.

As he straightens up, running fingers through dark hair, looking up into the sky and seeing only darkness for the clouds have swallowed the stars, he contemplates his life-his will as it were-to die.

Sasuke Uchiha has very little experience of a thing called impulse, he's kept himself on such a rigid line he doesn't know how he can break free, or even if beyond it there is anything else.

Neither does he remember what life is like to live unbound and weighed down by chains. He walks head held high, beautiful and sorrowful like a black swan into the jaws of the waiting tiger.

Sad, lonely, miserable life it is, it's his and his alone to throw away.

There's a fine line between genius and insanity…he thinks he might have left the border a long _long_ while back.

The clouds crack and thunder over him, and the heavens give way and pour, life water running in small streams, flowing down into a river that will eventually over flow it's banks and drown all those surrounding it when it happens.

Sasuke walks close to the river and watches it's surface as the rain drops dance and pirouette in globs that are sucked under, spat back out and sucked under again.

He cares not that he's wet to the bone, freezing and shivering.

For this life, what he has now.

For this future, this spiralling void, this plug hole, this devouring darkness.

This is exactly what he wanted.

_You sold you soul to the devil, Sasuke Uchiha, don't ever expect it back._

As the rain leaches across his face, something unbidden, warm and salty slides down his cheek and down his numb lips.

Inside, deep down inside, he knows….he's sorry for it.

-End-

* * *

If Angst was a flavour I think I'd have to put it on everything before I ate it and carry it around in my pocket with me, as my friend put it "Screw getting a tattoo with 'My Boyfriend' written on it, if we ever get one, let it say 'ANGST' in big black letters. That love will never ebb away." 

Alas, I do think she is right.

(Yes it was very emo, but Sasuke post timejump! Is very emo don't you think?)


End file.
